Friday, the Thirteenth | Page 5

that, looked at
retrospectively, are beyond all human understanding.
It was a beautiful July Saturday noon and Bob and I had just "packed
up" for the day preparatory to joining Mrs. Randolph on my yacht for a
run down to our place at Newport. As we stepped out of his office one
of the clerks announced that a lady had come in and had particularly
asked to see Mr. Brownley.
"Who the deuce can she be, coming in at this time on Saturday, just
when all alive men are in a rush to shake the heat and dirt of business
for food and the good air of all outdoors?" growled Bob. Then he said,
"Show her in."
Another minute and he had his answer.
A lady entered.
"Mr. Brownley?" She waited an instant to make sure he was the
Virginian.
Bob bowed.
"I am Beulah Sands, of Sands Landing, Virginia. Your people know
our people, Mr. Brownley, probably well enough for you to place me."
"Of the Judge Lee Sands's?" asked Bob, as he held out his hand.
"I am Judge Lee Sands's oldest daughter," said the sweetest voice I had
ever heard, one of those mellow, rippling voices that start the
imagination on a chase for a mocking-bird, only to bring it up at the
pool beneath the brook-fall in quest of the harp of moss and
watercresses that sends a bubbling cadence into its eddies and swirls.

Perhaps it was the Southern accent that nibbled off the corners and
edges of certain words and languidly let others mist themselves
together, that gave it its luscious penetration--however that may be, it
was the most no-yesterday-no-tomorrow voice I had ever heard. Before
I grew fully conscious of the exquisite beauty of the girl, this voice of
hers spelled its way into my brain like the breath of some bewitching
Oriental essence. Nature, environment, the security of a perfect
marriage have ever combined to constitute me loyal to my chosen one,
yet as I stood silent, like one dumb, absorbing the details of the
loveliness of this young stranger who had so suddenly swept into my
office, it came over me that here was a woman intended to enlighten
men who could not understand that shaft which in all ages has without
warning pierced men's hearts and souls--love at first sight. Had there
not been Katherine Blair, wife and mother--Katherine Blair Randolph,
who filled my love-world as the noonday August sun fills the
old-fashioned well with nestling warmth and restful shade--after this
interval, looking back at the past, I dare ask the question--who knows
but that I too might have drifted from the secure anchorage of my slow
Yankee blood and floated into the deep waters?
Beauty, the cynic's scoff, is in the eye of the beholder, or in an angle of
vision--mere product of lime-light, point of view, desire--but Beulah
Sands's was beauty beyond cavil, superior to all analysis, as definite as
the evening star against the twilight sky. In height medium, girlish, but
with a figure maturely modelled, charmingly full and rounded, yet by
very perfection of proportion escaping suggestion of "plumpness." The
head, surrounded and crowned with a wealth of dark golden hair, rested
on a neck that would have seemed short had its slender column sprung
less graciously from the lovely lines of the breast and shoulders
beneath. It was on the face, however, and finally on the eyes that one's
glances inevitably lingered--the face rose-tinted, with dimples in either
of the full cheeks, entering laughing protest against the sad droop that
brought slightly down the corners of a mouth too large perhaps for
beauty, if the coral curve of the lips had been less exquisitely perfect.
The straight, thin-nostriled nose, the broad forehead, the square, full
jaw almost as low at the points where they come beneath the ears as at
the chin, suggested dignity and high resolve coupled with a power of

purpose, rare in woman. The combination of forehead, jaw, and nose
was seldom seen. Had it been possessed by a man it would surely have
driven him to the tented field for his profession. But the greatest glory
of Beulah Sands was her eyes--large, full, very gray, very blue, vivid
with all the glamour of her personality, full of smiles and tears and
spirituality and passion; one instant, frankly innocent, they illuminated
the face of a blonde Madonna; the next, seen through the extraordinary,
long, jet-black eye-lashes underneath the finely pencilled black brows,
they caressed, coquetted, allured. I afterward found much of this girl's
purely physical fascination lay in this strange blending of English
fairness with Andalusian tints, though the abiding quality of her charm
was surely in an exaltation of spirit of which she might make the
dullest conscious. As she stood looking at